


Hit the Road Running

by Winterling42



Series: Wasteland Avengers [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Mad Max Series (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Dimension Travel, Gen, broken fingers, quiet night, some of us are genre-savvy, turning weapons into people, unfinished plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-28
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-05-03 17:56:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5301161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterling42/pseuds/Winterling42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I have a lot of feelings about characters with physical and mental similarities. Thus, they must meet, and talk about how similar and yet different they are. </p><p>Written as part of an otherwise invisible plot. (aka who cares about starting at the beginning of the story!) May involve more chapters, but only if someone cares. Or I get inspired. I'm not sure which is more unlikely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

“You know you can tell me if this hurts,” Steve says quietly, running careful fingers over the bloody bones in Bucky’s human hand. 

His bangs have come loose and fall over his face, but his breathing is just below fighting fast, and Steve can feel the trembling that hides under his skin. Neither of them had been prepared for a fight like that, but somehow it had hit Bucky hard. In the end it doesn’t matter if it’s sense memory; some nasty pieces of the Winter Solider surfacing like garbage out of the East River, or if it’s just the sheer number of broken bodies they’d had to leave behind today. The result’s the same. Bucky is half-buried under the Soldier’s conditioning, little more than a movable statue, and about as talkative. 

“We’re gonna have to splint these together,” Steve says, eying the breaks. Already the bones are starting to knit wrong, and he’d better hurry up and set them before he has to break them again. Bucky doesn’t even grunt out an acknowledgement. And when Steve straightens the bones with a series of gruesome pops and clicks, he doesn’t so much as groan. The trembling across his skin gets more intense, and the plates in his arm shift, but that’s it. Steve doesn’t have actual splints, but he does have bandages in one of the pockets on his belt. He resorts to wrapping Bucky’s broken fingers as tight as he can, knowing they’ll be healed by this time tomorrow and praying to whatever god is out here that this doesn’t fuck up his hand any worse. 

When it’s done, he leans his forehead against Bucky’s, and there’s a sort of collapse that goes on behind Bucky’s ribs. Something like an old, old wall giving way, and in the cloud of dust it leaves behind he can see sunlight again. “Damn,” Bucky mutters, though it sounds like every word is full of thorns. “That fucking stings.”

Steve laughs weakly and wraps a hand around the back of Bucky’s neck, thumb pressed gently against the back of his skull. This is what they do, sometimes. When Bucky says he’s okay for a mission and he’s not, when something in the mission goes sideways, goes _wrong_. It used to happen every day, when he’d first gotten back. Now, Steve remembers vividly that the last time it happened was almost five months back, and Hill had taken him off the Avengers’ duty roster and Bucky had sulked for a week before she’d gotten back into his good graces by giving him a robotics kit for Christmas. 

“Don’t get all sentimental on me, Steve,” Bucky continues to mutter through his bangs, and with every word he sounds more like himself. “We’ve got an audience.”

Without pulling away, Steve turns his head to look at the two who’d pulled them out of the fire. Max and Furiosa, dusty as the desert around them and bloody with the fight, with hair chopped just a few millimeters longer than a military buzz cut and with most of their gear made out of salvage. Both of them are setting up camp, pulling stuff out of the back of their car, which looks like it might have been VW Beetle not much younger than Steve in a former life. 

“I don’t think they’re interested,” Steve says quietly. The two of them move like they’ve worked together their whole lives, never in each other’s way, knowing what the other needs before they ask for it. The last people he’d seen move like that were Clint and Natasha, both of them just back from different missions from across the world but knowing exactly where the other would be at any given moment in any given space. 

“You talk to them.” He can feel Bucky’s grimace more than see it, and now he does lean back, just far enough to brush the hair out of his eyes. 

“You going to be okay?” Steve asks, even though he knows the answer. 

“Out here? No way,” Bucky snorts. “I’m going to stand first watch. Let the Dynamic Duo know.”

He doesn’t wait for Steve to answer, either, pushing himself to his feet and walking away with a rolling gait Steve knows is covering for how unsteady his balance is with excess adrenaline still dumped into his system. After a moment Steve sighs, and he picks up his jacket and goes to sit inside the invisible perimeter of the camp the two road warriors have established, settling with his head still turned towards Bucky.

 


	2. Chapter 2

“You’re good at that.” Max says, rising his eyes without moving his head. The tiny oil lamp next to Furiosa is the only light at all, besides the stars. Steve wonders if this place even _has_ a moon anymore. It seems like the kind of question you’d ask, past the end of the world. Then he realizes that Max is probably expecting some kind of response, and he pulls together the last few words they’ve shared. Which, to be fair, is four more words than the man’s said all day.

“At what?” Steve asks, trying to stare at the tiny fire and not at the improbable number of guns sitting around it. And he’d thought _Bucky_ was paranoid.

Max doesn’t answer at once; he grimaces and scratches his head with the butt of the pistol he’s cleaning and glances several times at Furiosa, who watches him silently. “At… turning weapons, into people.” 

Steve just stares for a moment, wondering what these battered people could possibly know about Hydra, about a war that must have been fought hundreds of years ago, for them. “Thanks,” he manages at last, and Max smiles. It’s a small smile, just the edge of a grin, caught out in the firelight as fragile as moth’s wings. 

“We’re not going to get any more prepared by counting everything twice,” Furiosa says at length, setting down the reassembled shotgun she’d been picking dust out of. “And with two more people we’ve only got enough food for another seven days.”

She and Max share a look, and Steve can tell just from that that a week isn’t long enough to get them back to civilization. If such a thing even exists out here, which he is beginning to doubt. And he knows Furiosa won’t have calculated in the extra energy a super-soldier metabolism needs to function, which, why would she? It’s obvious neither of them have ever seen anything like what he and Bucky can do. 

“Less than that,” he says, because there’s no time like the present to explain the ins and outs of super-strength and a healing factor. 

Both of them sit staring for a while. They’re not incredulous at all – they saw Steve rip a gun out of its mounts on the back of one of the pursuit cars today. They saw Bucky get hit by a car and be so unfazed that what he immediately did was _hit it back_. 

“What’s the run, then?” Max asks, and he looks at Furiosa. That’s some kind of disagreement between them, Steve can see the distaste flicker across her face before it vanishes back into the blank scowl that seems to be her default expression. 

“I’ll tell you tomorrow,” she says at last, and Steve sits up straighter to protest, doesn’t see how they can put off planning any longer, and Furiosa gives him a death glare so strong Steve actually rocks back a little. “Tomorrow.” 

He blinks a few times, weighing the pros and cons of a debate. In the end, he bows to her experience in this place, and settles himself onto the sand. Bucky’s on watch. After all the shit that’s gone down today, Steve wouldn’t be surprised if Bucky didn’t so much as close his eyes for more than a few seconds tonight. 

“We’ll keep it in twos,” Furiosa says, but she’s talking to Max, not him. “Me and… Bucky. I’ll wake you after midnight.”

Max grunts an acknowledgement and stumps over to the car, pulling elaborately woven blankets out of the back and returning to curl up in the sand. Steve notices that he put himself right where Furiosa can see him without craning her neck, and he glances out over the sand towards Bucky, who must have heard every word but who hasn’t so much as shifted his grip on his rifle. 

These desert-dwellers aren’t actually the strangest people he’s ever met, which would have to include several aliens and at least one sentient ooze. But they are strange; the worst walking wounded he’s ever seen, scared and wary and ready to shoot at the faintest sound. Steve leans the shield up against his side, where he can grab it without even waking up. And then, with another glance to make _sure_ Bucky’s still standing at his six, Steve closes his eyes and tries desperately to sleep. 

 


	3. Chapter 3

After she blows out the lamp to avoid spoiling her night-vision, the man with the silver arm comes to sit back inside the scope of her view. She keeps him on her right as she does sweeps, wondering if there’s a way to bring these two strangers back alive. At first glance, it doesn’t look like it.

“If you left tonight,” the long-haired stranger says, keeping his voice very flat, “You could make it maybe a day before I caught you.” 

She notices the singular pronoun, but she doesn’t ask about it. She doesn’t even question, really, whether or not he _could_ catch her and Max, in the Citadel buggy, if they had over a six hour head start. She’s trying to think of a way to make that part unnecessary. With the guzzoline they have, it’s a careful fifteen day ride back to the Citadel. They have to make it through Alpha and Buzzard territory, too. Which would be easier with two more fighters on board. Furiosa glances at the one with the shield, Steve, and remembers how easily he’d dismantled a car with his bare hands. 

Though neither of the strangers had any experience fighting on the Fury Road, with fiery thunder in their teeth and wheels shaking the dirt loose beneath them, she thinks they would be good allies to have. And bad enemies. 

“If we left tonight, I’d shoot you before we did,” she says, turning back out towards the empty Wasteland, stifling a grimace as the straps dug into her back. 

She’s not sure what she expects to that. Another threat, maybe, or an angry growl. She doesn’t expect a grunt of agreement from the stranger, or the way he smiles. He smiles like Toast smiles, all anger and pain, and anger at pain. They sit in silence for a while, and Furiosa surprises herself by letting him cover her right sweep. She doesn’t even notice she’s done it until the third time she turns her head and realizes she hasn’t looked right in over an hour. 

And there he is, the man with the old-worldly name, sitting with his knees bent towards his chest and a gun in his metal hand. She’s not sure if she should envy the smoothness of those metal joints, the five fingers, the way it fills out almost like a real arm would. It seems just a little too big for his body, just a little heavy for his back to carry. But there’s no straps around his back and waist, no buckles to undo. It’s as if some god had come and fused his body to the metal, as cleanly as if they’d never been apart. 

The next time she shifts she exposes a sore the new leather worked into her skin, and Furiosa grits her teeth. This was supposed to be a milk run, out to the Mines for some much-needed clothing scrap. She and Max had both argued that one car, big enough to take the haul and small enough not to attract notice, would do better than a convoy. It wasn’t like they needed to run a thousand pounds of metal scrap out of the place. Her new arm is lighter, more maneuverable, but it’s also much less attuned to her body than the old one, and the new fittings will hurt like hell until they’re ground down with enough dust and blood.

“It’s fifteen days back to the Citadel,” she says, keeping the stranger in the edges of her sight. “The only place friendly to us for a hundred days ride in any direction. If you kill us, you’ll die out here. If the locals don’t get you, the desert will.”

“What’s your point?” 

Interesting. His angry rasp sounds almost like hers on a good day. Furiosa unbuckles the straps around her midriff and shrugs off the arm, reaching around to poke at the sores and make sure they aren’t festering. She can get Capable to look at them when she gets back.

 _When_ she gets back. Furiosa feels a lurch in her gut at her own hubris, and has to swallow down the reactionary paranoia that comes with it. There’s no such thing as certainty in the Wasteland. _If_ she gets back, and _if_ the Citadel is running smooth enough for a training medic to look at her back, then _maybe_ Furiosa can care about it. _Now_ she just presses hard enough to know it’s blood and not pus welling out, and puts her rifle on the ground next to her to look over the arm. 

It’s handled the fighting well, despite the lighter materials. She has to tug one wire free of its clutch, and runs an appraising hand along the leather to try and smooth the sharp edges a little. And one of the gear shafts that function as a sort of bone is twisted out of alignment. She tugs on it sharply, but with one hand she can’t get it back into place. “My point is that there’s no point in hurting us,” she says, raising her head automatically to do another sweep. “You need us. We don’t need you.”

“Thanks.” 

Furiosa glares over at him, looking directly at the man for the first time since he sat down. The dark circles under his eyes remind her of the War Boy’s paint, but he doesn’t look half-life. If anything, both he and his shield bearer are ridiculously healthy. Almost absurdly so. She can’t see what in the world he could be thanking her for. Angrily, she pulls on the gear shaft again, even knowing it won’t snap back. 

“You want me to do that?” Bucky asks, without moving. Furiosa bares her teeth in a sneering growl, holding the shoulder pauldron down with her stump and pulling at the out-of-place shaft with her true hand. She hardly needs the help of this stranger, who can do impossible things and has threatened to hunt her down at least once tonight. “I’m good with machines,” he says, and he sounds so much like Nux for half a second that Furiosa pauses. The detachment he’s been cultivating since he sat down peels back, revealing an earnest sort of sincerity that Furiosa can neither trust nor discard. 

And it’s a simple fix. If she doesn’t have the brute strength for it, certainly this man does. “Sure,” she says, holding out the hand towards him. “Try it.”

He accepts the hand as if shaking it, pulling, with the faint scratching of metal-on-metal ringing odd against her ear. Bucky stares at the thing for a minute or two, long enough that she’s ready to snatch it back. Her hand is on the rifle from the moment he’s touched her prothetic. It’s not like she can work up a new one, out here. This was a stupid idea, as stupid as letting him cover part of her sweep. As stupid as thinking _when_ instead of _if_.

But all he does is wrap metal fingers around the piece of metal that’s serving her as a bone and snap it back into place. It looks like it takes him about as much effort as opening a car door. Furiosa suppresses the surge of uneasiness and reminds herself that however much these impossible strangers can heal in a day, two head shots will leave her and Max free on the road. 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is all I've got, folks. Who knows if there'll be more some day.

 

“This is good work,” Bucky says, turning the arm over in his mismatched hands, and he means it. He’s got more a fiddly mind than Steve, was always messing with any engine and mechanics he could get his hands on before the War. Was always keen to know how things worked. It was why he and Howard had gotten on like fish in water when they got shoved together. 

Most of those memories are overexposed film, full of holes that have acid around the edges. Best not to touch. 

“Thanks,” Furiosa says, but she doesn’t mean _thanks_. Bucky’s too tired to figure out what she means, puts the arm back on the sand and looks at her instead. She’s too thin, in a way that’s uncomfortably familiar. He thought she might look strange, with the no hair thing, but it suits her somehow. He can’t imagine her wearing it pulled back in a ponytail like Pepper’s, or in any of Natasha’s countless disguises. Whatever she is, Furiosa is not made for disguise.

“What about yours?” she asks, reaching out. Bucky flinches, but she’s only reclaiming her arm, and pulls it back to her side without even a raised eyebrow. She starts checking the joints and the wires again, giving her someplace to look that isn’t him. 

His arm recalibrates with a shower of _clink-clinks_ that sounds like hammers on nails in this desert quiet. He thinks about not answering, and he thinks about lying. He stares at the shield for a while, leaning on the ground next to Steve’s curled up body. 

“I honestly couldn’t tell you,” Bucky says drily, clenching his fist. But he means to do that. It’s a conscious decision. “I wasn’t exactly conscious when they shoved it on me.” Brutal honesty seems to fit best, out here. He’s not sure he likes what that means.

Furiosa, funnily enough, doesn’t reach to her own arm at that. She reaches up to touch the back of her neck instead, making a noise of agreement that goes deeper than words. “Boys back at the Citadel would say it’s shine,” she says, turning to look out over the desert. There’s nothing but dust and rock as far as Bucky can tell, and that’s pretty damn far considering he’s still the best sniper the US Army’s ever seen, and no Clint doesn’t count. He never served.

“We both know it’s not,” she keeps talking, her stump crossed over her chest to keep her warm. “I don’t know you, Bucky,” she says, and it’s almost weird how his name sounds when she says it. Like it doesn’t mean what he thought it did. Like it’s got no meaning at all, except what he gives it. “But I don’t see how we’re going to survive this with you two along.”

He snorts, loud enough that Max, wrapped up in blankets from the Wastelanders’ car, shifts uneasily. “Don’t be so optimistic. You’ll hurt Steve’s feelings.” Bucky drawls. Furiosa frowns before she smiles, like it’s an effort to recognize sarcasm, and Bucky ignores that stab of familiarity that comes with that, too. 

Two weapons trying to be human stuck in a post-apocalyptic desert with their golden retriever boyfriends. If he didn’t know better, Bucky would almost say that Someone up there has a real sense of humor.

 


End file.
